This is a collection of news about border issues, particularly those seen from Arizona and regarding the right to keep and bear arms. Sources often include Mexican media. It's often interesting to see how different the view is from the south.
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Friday, April 27, 2012

AZMEX EXTRA 27-4-12

AZMEX EXTRA 27 APR 2012

The 99 thousand:
Several comments:
1. There has to be a list of make, model and serial numbers.
It looks like the only to get access to it will probably take a
lawsuit and/or Congressional action to get them. The "ongoing
investigation" BS is just that. Believe access to this information
is crucial.

2. The list would be necessary to establish which arms were
transfered to Mexican government via U.S. aid and commercial sales.
There have been tens of thousands just in past few years. Any and
all of these will be in a very detailed and extensive paper trail.
How many over the last 70 or so years?

3. Don't know where in Mexico one can go these days and not see U.S.
made firearms in hands of Mexican government personnel. Especially
the AR15/M16/M4 platform

4. The list needs to be cross checked against the NICS register of
stolen firearms.
This should also include the firearms stolen in gun shop robberies,
i.e. the smash and grabs, etc.
Which we could never get BATFE to discuss. For a long time here in
the SW, it has been an article of faith that stolen firearms end up
in Mexico. Just like so many vehicles.

5. The list should also disclose where the rest of the 99k firearms
came from. Keeping in mind that governments who manufacture firearms
and weapons in general can put any identification they want on
them. None, duplicates, counterfeit, etc. As always, any
significant number of weapons transfered involves one or more
governments, and their agendas.

6. As is unfortunately normal south of the border, the is a lot of
"leakage" of weapons from the various governments. A lot of
desertions, in the many thousands, from the various militaries, and
it is also SOP to bring the weapons with. The number of desertions
from Mexican military no longer available.

7. Before the news of Fast & Furious broke, and U.S. aid money
started flowing, there was a good deal of information available about
firearms recovered. Time and location of incident, including make,
model, and s/n. All this is being suppressed now. There has been
several PR events of destruction of firearms. Destruction of evidence?

8. As reported numerous times in the series of AZMEX reports over
last six years or so, many cases of law enforcement or military
working for drug cartels or even as far as loaning weapons to prison
inmates to go out and do hits.

9. There are numerous reports of Mexican Army disarming local police
or rounding them up to inspect firearms.

10. Before the Mexican government instituted even more gun controls
about 25 to 30 years back now, there were many gun shops and sales to
Mexican citizens. Of course U.S. made firearms were the vast
majority imported and sold. Given the size of the U.S. manufacturing
base, and virtually non existent Mexican industry.

11. Mexico has been importing large numbers of weapons from Europe.
Again, Congressional action and/or lawsuits probably necessary. BTW,
about a year ago now, uproar in Germany over exported arms being used
in the drug war.

12. Re: #5 above. Don't forget our fiends in Cuba, Nicaragua,
Venezuela, et al, whose' agenda would be well served by a
destabilized or failed narco state on U.S. border.

WASHINGTON - The government said Thursday that 68,000 guns recovered
by Mexican authorities since 2007 have been traced back to the United
States.
The flood of tens of thousands of weapons underscores complaints from
Mexico that the U.S. is responsible for arming the drug cartels. Six
years of violence between warring cartels have killed more than
47,000 people in Mexico.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives released its
latest data covering 2007 through 2011. According to the ATF, many of
the guns seized in Mexico and submitted to the ATF for tracing were
recovered at the scenes of cartel shootings while others were seized
in raids on illegal arms caches.
All the recovered weapons were suspected of being used in crimes in
Mexico.
At an April 2 North American summit in Washington, Mexican President
Felipe Calderón said the U.S. government has not done enough to stop
the flow of assault weapons and other guns from the U.S. to Mexico.
Calderón credited President Obama with making an effort to reduce the
gun traffic but said Obama faces "internal problems … from a
political point of view."
There is Republican opposition in Congress and broad opposition from
Republicans and gun-rights advocates elsewhere to a new assault-
weapons ban or other curbs on gun sales.
The Obama administration says it is working to tighten inspections of
border checkpoints in the absence of an assault-rifle ban that
expired before Obama took office.
For more than a year, the ATF has been reeling from accusations that
some of its agents in Arizona were ordered by superiors to step aside
rather than intercept illicit loads of arms headed for Mexico.
The Justice Department's inspector general and Congress have been
looking into the Arizona gun probe, Operation Fast and Furious.
The issue of gun-control legislation hasn't been part of the
Republican-led probe of Fast and Furious by the House Oversight and
Government Reform Committee.
The number of all types of ATF-traced firearms manufactured in the
U.S. or imported into the U.S. and later recovered in Mexico rose
from 11,842 in 2007 to 14,504 in 2011, according to the ATF. The
figures for U.S.-sourced firearms were 21,035 in 2008, 14,376 for
2009 and 6,404 in 2010. Included in those totals, the number of
rifles recovered in Mexico, submitted to the ATF for tracing and
found to have come from the U.S. rose from 4,885 in 2007 to 8,804
last year.
Mexican law enforcement officials report that certain types of rifles
such as AK variants with detachable magazines are being used more
frequently by drug trafficking organizations, the ATF said in a news
release.
Mexico has provided ATF information on 99,691 guns. ATF determined
that the source for 68,161 of the weapons was the U.S, 68 percent of
the total. For the remainder, the ATF was unable to determine a U.S.
source or was unable to trace the request to a country of origin. The
68 percent figure is down from estimates of 90 percent in years past
when Mexico was sharing less information with the U.S.
The controversial tactic of "letting guns walk" out of gun shops in
the hands of suspected "straw purchasers" was used in Operation Fast
and Furious at the ATF in Phoenix in an effort to track the guns to
major weapons traffickers and drug cartels to make criminal cases
against smuggling kingpins who had eluded prosecution for years. But
the tracking of the weapons was faulty, and many of them wound up at
crime scenes in Mexico and the U.S. Two of the guns spotted at one
point during Fast and Furious were later discovered at the scene of
the killing of U.S. border agent Brian Terry near Arivaca.
Before Fast and Furious, the ATF in Arizona had tried the gun-walking
tactic in three investigations during the George W. Bush
administration, with other tracking problems and only limited success.
During the Obama administration, the ATF has undergone a management
shake-up, and Attorney General Eric Holder has called Fast and
Furious a flawed operation that must never be repeated.
On StarNet: Find more border-related news at azstarnet.com/border